text: In the late eighties, Brill contributed to various studies with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, following the excavation of a number of exciting shipwrecks including the Serçe Liman, and the Ulu Burun (Barnes et al. 1986, Brill 1989). Brills own technique of lead isotope analysis was to provide a means for provenancing items aboard ship, and thus determine the ships origin and her ports-of-call. The excavators of the Serçe Liman wanted to know whether she was Byzantine or Islamic, a complicated question for lead isotope analysis as the lead ores of the Eastern Mediterranean share geographical characteristics and therefore overlap (Barnes et al. 1986). Using 900 lead net sinkers divided into six loose groupings, Brill found groups III, V and VI to be Byzantine, that is with ores found in modern-day Turkey (Barnes et al. 1986). Group I, however, was taken to be most indicative of the ship's origin; this group contained net sinkers, but also two ceramic glazes and three glass vessels, all sharing virtually identical lead ores with only one isotopic match, ‘an ore from Anguran, northwest of Tehran’ according to Barnes et al. (1986, 7).